This will be the official collection of my Space Engine addons, all together in one thread. I will reserve a few posts as separate categories. This will also be host to my main world building projects, some I've worked on for over a decade, which I will elaborate on in a post further down.

In any case, I am open to ideas and suggestions for improvements to these mods. I am also open to new submissions for my two world building projects, such as spaceships and background stories for various places.

I hope you like them!

Last edited by PlutonianEmpire on 02 Nov 2016 19:14, edited 1 time in total.

The Plutonian Empire is my primary world building project that I've slowly worked on for the last 17 years, which got it's start in a good old fashioned game of Civilization II. Since then, it has become multi-platform, meaning I have it on several games, which will be my method of story telling.

This is a high fantasy space opera universe, so if you're not fond of witches, wizards, and demons flying around in FTL spaceships, this probably isn't the kind of storytelling for you.

Set 51,200 years into the future, the Plutonian Empire is led by its founding King through 50 millenia of evolution, from a puny upstart rebel state on a brand new magical island in the South Atlantic, to complete conquest of an entire universe. Thousands of years of history, countless trillions of planets, and its fair share of successes and setbacks.

It's also terribly author self-insert, so please forgive me for declaring myself the King of the Universe.

Ideas and submissions are welcome and encouraged for this project!

The bulk of my storytelling is on another game, NationStates, but I am adding it bit by bit to the SE wiki info boxes. I also have the TPE rendered in Sims 2, Sid Meier's Civilization II: Test of Time, SimCity 4, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. So far only the Civ 2 version has been published, on a Civilization fan site.

The pak file for it includes 10 star systems, some unfinished with missing moons, but I'm getting there. There will definitely be more systems and storylines added in the future. It's a nonstop project! It also includes my terrain mod as well, and some custom atmospheres (.atm models). The addon uses my life probability mod, but it is not required but highly recommended to use with this Plutonian Empire Universe mod. It will help give that "space opera" feel, such as native multicell life around hot, short lived B class stars, which happens anyway in the TPE universe. I also tried to make life more prolific and more common as well, although some versions of SE are bugged so increasing the overall probability doesn't work in those versions, but the B star life will still appear.

Naturally, since this is set in the distant future, the night sky as seen from Sol *will* be different, but not because of stellar proper motion, which SE lacks, but because of artificial, man-made stars nearby. And several Sol system bodies have been terraformed, as one can expect. 3 have been ejected from Sol completely.

I also included several new spacecraft models, one of which that I made with the SE ship editor last year. The rest are models that were originally created by third parties for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but converted for use in Space Engine by me. Credits at the bottom of the readme.

To install, copy the tpe.pak file to the addons folder in your space engine folder. To see the Sol System as it appears 51200 years from now in the TPE universe, install sol53200.pak as well.

To use the probability mod, go into your config folder and open main-user.cfg with a text editor such as notepad. Next open the tpe_main-user.cfg, copy the text in that file and paste it into your main-user.cfg, by either commenting out the old life probability generator settings or overwriting it.

Next, to see the custom Wiki Info in your game, open the tpe_wiki.cfg file, and copy and paste the contents into your user-eng-db.cfg, and save.

Model Credits: * 777 models all created by Melvin Rafi of MelJet.com * 747 models for "RingJet", "Belle Hadean Airways", and "Plutonian Airlines" all made by Chang Yeon, Vincent Cho of the Project-Opensky team (now defunct). * 747 model for "TPE Family Plane" created by Hiroshi Igami of the Project-Opensky team (now defunct). * 717-200/MD-95 model for "RingJet" created by Erick Cantu of Stewart-Global Aircraft (SGA, now defunct). Base paintkit textures by Erick Cantu, modified by me (PlutonianEmpire). * A-380 models + base textures all created by Robert Versluys. Textures modified by me (PlutonianEmpire). * SS Galactic created by me (PlutonianEmpire) with Space Engine Ship Editor.

0.20.0: * Updated Version Format to use 4 digits instead of 3. * Added To-Do List. * Incorporated Rodrigo's new shaders and merged with mine. * Overhauled the Solar System: ~ Split and renamed the SolarSysTPE.sc file into two files, TPE_Sol_2020AD.sc and TPE_Sol_53200AD.sc, each representing their labelled time periods. Each have their own pak file. To view the "2020 AD" version, just move the "53200 AD" version to a temporary location. ~ Ejected Mercury, Mars, and Saturn from Sol. They now orbit Sigma Draconis. * Replaced Mercury and Saturn with imported procedural planets. * Aurea Borealis now occupies Mars' orbit. ~ Added 4 new planets interior to Mercury's orbit. ~ All 6 new planets are named for ancient love goddesses. ~ colorUpPlants on Pluto have been whitened, for a fake mimicking of snowfall. ~ Merged "Mars Impactor" comet into TPE_Sol_2020.sc file. ~ Changed Earth's atmosphere model for 53200 AD to "Thick," to better represent the polluted, trashed environment. ~ Removed the code for the bump maps from Pluton's Solar System mod. * Added "Rem Galaxy," A Dead Disk Galaxy. This *will* reset your catalog galaxy seeds! Write down the first digits of your bookmarks (RS xxxx-, for example) before installing! Afterwards, go to your galaxies to see the new numbers to use for your bookmarks. Procedural galaxies are unaffected, but globulars are. * Updated tpe_wiki.cfg: ~ Added description for Rem Galaxy ~ Fixed issues with parentbody for some planets. They weren't showing up in the in-game wiki as a result.

0.13: * Added Kham132's volcano code for pseudo city lights. * Added pseudo-city lights to dozens of procedural worlds. * Added several new spacecraft models. ~ One of them is a proper spacecraft. The rest are aeroplane models created by third parties for Microsoft Flight Simulator. I stuck with freeware paint kit models to help reduce copyright issues. * Added code to some SolSys planets to include the bumpmaps from Pluton's Solar System mod, but have not included them myself, so they are commented out by default.

This World building universe centers around a story I wrote and posted in my website, http://www.plutonianempire.net . I wrote it to cope with my anxiety about that whole 2012 thing. Now I just do it for fun alternate history. It is also a bit of a spinoff from my Plutonian Empire universe, but set in an entirely different universe, as I use a multiverse idea for my projects.

Made several updates to the Delta Trianguli system. Belle Hades now has cloud bump heights many km's in height, to try to simulate a "stormy" environment.

Added several star systems, including a few real stars. As a result, any other addons you have taking place at Delta Trianguli, 8 Trianguli, Kepler-16, and Kepler-35 will conflict with this addon. Be warned!

Issue 1: Belle Hades' oceans on the cubemap are only 10 meters deep. It is beyond my ability to draw the ocean floor without 10 km drop offs at the edges of the continents.

Issue 2: With the cubemap texture on, Belle Hades looks weird when seen from a distance. It is beyond my ability to fix. As a result, the procedural surface is used by default, but it can be switched over to the cubemap surface by commenting out the procedural surface and uncommenting the cubemap parameters in the Surface tag for Belle Hades. I have included the original cylindricals if anyone can fix it.

I made it for Celestia originally, but when development died and I found SE, I figured I'd port and convert it to Space Engine, for better explorability.

12 planets, 1 lifeterra, and two suns in a 10 day orbit, around Delta Tri (Hip 10644).

I made it using various incarnations of Space Engine and the terrain mods from Rodrigo, but it should look fine with base shaders.

To install, enter the 7z file and copy the pak file to your addons folder. Copy the contents of the provided .cfg file to config>user-<your language>-db.cfg. Thats it! The cylindricals folder is not required, it is for advanced users to experiment with the cylindrical textures in Photoshotp/Gimp and/or in SpaceEngineer's cubemap program.

Enjoy! B)

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Last edited by PlutonianEmpire on 02 Oct 2017 19:17, edited 6 times in total.

This uncreatively named galaxy is a fictional and unrealistically colorful galaxy, just 1.68 million ly away from earth. I gave it the maximum radius available to procedural galaxies to maximize star count, and it therefore takes up a large part of Earth's night sky.

I have several texture models, from my few years of tweaking it for SpaceEngine, mainly to add some randomness to the procedural galaxies generated by SpaceEngine.

Hera, a fictional lifeterra moon for Jupiter. A bit of "alternate history", if you will. Imagine how different the Solar System might have been if Jupiter managed to form or even snatch an Earth-size moon during the tumultuous beginnings of our star system...

"A Deity has come to Sol, and decided to help spare the Earth from Global Warming. So she split 8% of the sun's Mass to add a second sun. Despite the IAU's objections, the Deity demanded the new sun be named Spitfire. This is our story..." ~ Morgan Freeman, Spitfire, 2022 AD.

Important! Due to a bug in Space Engine, some comets will show up at the barycenter, because of incorrect period calculations. Be sure to turn comet tails OFF while exploring Sol with this mod!

Earth With Rings

I originally made this for Celestia, and have ported it to Space Engine. I replaced the default clouds with 3 procedural layers because the default clouds are ugly and its source image is over 15 years old. To make the clouds resemble the screenshots, use either Rodrigo's clouds, my clouds, or both. This addon should work with every version that uses .pak files.

I have several new spacecraft models, that were originally created by third parties for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but converted for use in Space Engine by me. Credits at the bottom of the readme. They have a max Warp/Hyper Factor of 24, so I highly recommend using the mouse wheel to adjust the warp factors, to avoid overshooting.

I am pleased to reveal that I am finally ready to release the next set of spaceships. They are Tri-Ships, Triangular 10-mile wide interstellar vehicles that are the TPE's most well-known military vessel. Their seemingly "small" size defies what one would expect, for their super-weapons pack the power of a Death Star into a compact spaceship, giving them the ability to destroy planets. And in some cases, small stars.

The ship lights will come in 3 colors, and therefore 3 seperate ships in the menu will be seen, to see which alliance or Defence Forces branch controls the selected ship.

While I extensively enjoy the mountains provided by Klud and Rodrigo, I figured, "Why not have both?"

So in addition to disabling the height suppression effect of the terraces to make the "smooth" Montes be as glorious as ever....

I also replaced the "Hills" code with the montes code provided by Klud's Terrain Mod. I did need to keep the height suppression effect of the terraces to keep them from getting too steep.

For the "Hills2", I simply replaced the "jordan turbulence" code that created those conical hills with the "Hills1" code from Rodrigo's Terrain mod, since the default "hills1" code makes hills 1 look too artificial, IMO.

And finally.

Enhanced canyons!

To install, just extract the shaders folder to your addons folder in SpaceEngine 0.980. Readme included! My Terrain Mod is attached to the bottom of this post. Scroll down to get it.

I did make a few miscellaneous changes as well, with the mares, to allow mountains in them, because flat is boring. Mares are suppressed for Terras as well.

Credits: This mod uses code from Rodrigo, Klud, and myself.

Compatibility: This mod is compatible with Rodrigo's Terrain Mod. Be sure to install mine last to see the effects of both.

Compatibility: This mod is compatible with Rodrigo's Mod; to use, enter tg_clouds_height.glsl after installing mine, and uncomment (delete the //'s that disables the line starting with "float height = 0.8*(...") and comment out the first "float height" line (add new //'s). I have a third float height line in the middle for modders to experiment with. These lines are towards the bottom of the file. (I can't guarantee it will look pretty though.)

I have created a simple clouds mod that fixes the orientation of the stripeTwist direction for the default clouds, like so:

With this change clouds on procedural terras will look MUCH more like the "stripeTwist" we see for the planet Earth:

Installation: Just place the attached .glsl file at the bottop of this post into your Addons>shaders folder. It must be renamed to tg_clouds_height.glsl. Download only ONE. That's it!

I also recently realized the clouds are actually pitifully short in SE, so I added an optional addition, which multiplies the clouds bumpHeights by 3, for more dramatic visages:

Installation: The same as above, just no renaming needed. Download only ONE!

Enjoy!

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User-Main.cfg Tweaks

Life Probability Mod

Before SpaceEngine 0.980: Make a backup copy of *universe.cfg* please.In SpaceEngine 0.980 and Later: Make a backup copy of *main-user.cfg* please.

Update: With the advent of SpaceEngine 0.98, the Life Probability Generator has been moved to a user-based main-user.cfg, rendering universe.cfg obsolete. As such, the code pasted below needs to go into main-user.cfg, towards the bottom. Good luck!

High mass star systems were getting lonely, so I tweaked the "Life Probability" parameters in universe.cfg to both increase the overall chances of life occurring in the universe, as well as to use minimal system age requirements to allow A and B stars to give rise to lifeterras with complex multicellular life. This basically gives the Space Engine universe a more "space opera" or "space fantasy" feel with proliferating life on a lot more worlds and higher mass star systems, as opposed to the rather lonely "Rare Earth" universe that SE generates normally.

Totally unrealistic and not at all like reality, this is simply for those who want our part of the Galaxy to more resemble a "typical" neighborhood for a Space Engine spiral galaxy.

Have Fun!

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Color Palettes

Installing Color Palettes

To install custom color palettes, go into your SpaceEngine>Addons folder, and create the following folder structure: textures>common, meaning create a new folder called "textures" and then create another new folder inside that called "common". Without quotes of course. Finally, place the palette.cfg into the common folder. If it isn't named "palette.cfg", rename it to "palette.cfg"

Important: Delete the cache folder after installing new palettes or modifying existing ones! If you don't, you may be unable to notice any changes in the colors of procedural planets!

Full Range Palette 1.01

Almost a hundred styles for planets, originally compiled by Toty and several other users, tweaked and re-compiled by me:

This is my music mod. There are two context files, one for if you're just using my music mod; and the other if you're using this music mod together with Pluton's A-L-E-X's music mod. Also, as a bonus, the context file includes some of the Objects that appear in some of my other mods! It should load fine even if you don't have these planets.

***I have done my best to make sure the artists are properly accredited in both the file names and titles.***

This uncreatively named galaxy is a fictional and unrealistically colorful galaxy, just 1.68 million ly away from earth. I gave it the maximum radius available to procedural galaxies to maximize star count, and it therefore takes up a large part of Earth's night sky.

I have several texture models, from my few years of tweaking it for SpaceEngine, mainly to add some randomness to the procedural galaxies generated by SpaceEngine.

To install, simply place the .pak file into your addons folder, and delete the cache. That's it!

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Simple Clouds Mod

I have created a simple clouds mod that fixes the orientation of the stripeTwist direction for the default clouds, like so:

With this change clouds on procedural terras will look MUCH more like the "stripeTwist" we see for the planet Earth:

Installation: Just place the attached .glsl file at the bottop of this post into your Addons>shaders folder. It must be renamed to tg_clouds_height.glsl. That's it!

Enjoy!

Compatibility: This mod is compatible with Rodrigo's Mod; to use, enter tg_clouds_height.glsl after installing mine, and uncomment (delete the //'s that disables the line starting with "float height = 0.8*(...") and comment out the first "float height" line (add new //'s). I have a third float hight line in the middle for modders to experiment with. These lines are towards the bottom of the file. (I can't guarantee it will look pretty though.)

This uncreatively named galaxy is a fictional and unrealistically colorful galaxy, just 1.68 million ly away from earth. I gave it the maximum radius available to procedural galaxies to maximize star count, and it therefore takes up a large part of Earth's night sky.

I have several texture models, from my few years of tweaking it for SpaceEngine, mainly to add some randomness to the procedural galaxies generated by SpaceEngine.

The problem with Pluto Galaxy is that I'm not quite paying attention when I initially zip up the add on. When I right click on the folder and tell windows to "send to>zip file", I keep thinking it sends the contents of the plutogal folder to a zip file when, in reality, it puts the folder inside an entirely new zip file. I will need to reupload my addons that were incorrectly packaged.

Until then, a good work around is to take the pak file out of the addons folder, rename the .pak to .zip (make sure you set your computer to reveal file types), and then enter zip file where you will find the plutogal folder. Extract that to your addons folder. It should now be visible.

The problem with Pluto Galaxy is that I'm not quite paying attention when I initially zip up the add on. When I right click on the folder and tell windows to "send to>zip file", I keep thinking it sends the contents of the plutogal folder to a zip file when, in reality, it puts the folder inside an entirely new zip file. I will need to reupload my addons that were incorrectly packaged.

Until then, a good work around is to take the pak file out of the addons folder, rename the .pak to .zip (make sure you set your computer to reveal file types), and then enter zip file where you will find the plutogal folder. Extract that to your addons folder. It should now be visible.

Thank you for posting, N0b0dy!

Thanks for notifying Plutonian! However the galaxy is still invisible but I found out why: You forgot to put the galaxies folder (that contains the catalog .sc file) inside a catalogs folder before packing it up .